What started with a Bible study in the basement of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, became the scene of mass murder at the hands of a racist.

Nine members of Emanuel AME – including its pastor, S.C. Senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and parishioner Cynthia Graham Hurd, a librarian at the College of Charleston – lost their lives that night, leaving the congregation and the city stunned, appalled and heartbroken.

Powers co-wrote the book We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel with South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth and writer Herb Frazier in an effort to shine a light on the strength of the church and its congregants, a strength born out of pain and passion for seeking something better.

Recently Powers, director of the College’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston and interim president of Charleston’s International African American Museum, answered questions about how Emanuel AME has turned darkness into hope throughout history, and how we can hold onto that hope even today.

As a congregation in the AME denomination, Emanuel was born into activism because the denomination was conceived as an antiracist, antislavery church, and one that would provide for African American autonomy when it was originally founded in the late 18th century.